Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Voter Registration Trends in Florida

One of the challenges facing the Democratic Party in Florida continues to be a degredating trend in voter registrations outside of urban areas.

One of the difficulties in looking at voter registration by party is that in Florida, particularly in northern and rural parts, older registered Democrats tend to vote more and more like Republicans (the "Dixiecrat" affect as it's often referred to.)

To try and quantify this a little and see what kinds of trends we might be looking at, I compared voter registration numbers, Democrat vs. Republican, by county, by the decade the voter was registered. The map is below. A ratio of 100 indicates an equal number of Democratic and Republican registrations. A ratio of 200 indicates twice as many Democrats as Republicans. (I have not included 3rd party/no party in this analysis, although the number of registrations in this group has continued to increase over the years until today when it is on a par with either party.)

The decline of the Democratic Party in voter registration in northern Florida is readily apparent.

The difficulties faced by the FDP in SW Florida becomes very clear when you see that they have never had a registration advantage in these counties.

About the only place where you see any reversal of these negative trends are in 3 very ubran counties: Broward, Pinellas and Palm Beach.

This is just a rough first pass on these data. I hope to stimulate discussion about what these trends tell us and what opportunities and challenges they present as we try and revitalize the Democratic party throughout the state.

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If Democrats in Florida, and indeed around the nation, are going to continue to win elections and therefore promote good, progressive policies - we must have the infrastructure to win.

This blog is devoted to the ongoing conversation about the most critical element in this ever-increasingly complex puzzle: local Democratic organizations. In Florida, they're called Democratic Executive Committees, or DECs for short.

Without functional and effective DECs, its often very difficult if near impossible for Democrats to get elected, and indeed for our two-party system, and therefore democracy, to flourish.

So we welcome your ideas, comments, and occasionally your frustrations. Thanks for participating!